What's your hardware history

[iain_33]

What did you start with and how did you get to what you've got now?

I started with a Commodore 64, passed on from a family friend. Still the fastest boot-up of any computer I've had - switch on, blink, READY. Really taught me about computers and programming. I learned a lot especially from a book which had me write an assembler/disassembler in BASIC, which I then used to write a faster & better one in assembly. Good times!

Also had a Spectrum ZX and a Spectrum 128 but the C64 reigned supreme, until I inherited a 20MHz 386 PC from another family friend, which ran Windows 3.0 which was rubbish, so I stayed in DOS most of the time. I still liked tinkering on the C64 but I could tinker even more on the 386's Turbo Pascal.

I soon outgrew the 386 and saved up enough money to gut its case and replace its innards with a home-built 1.5GHz (still single-core at this point) system with a 40GB HDD. Windows 95 needed patching from the start - it wouldn't boot, the CPU was just too fast for it and caused a timing error. I seem to remember the HDD was too big for it too, it couldn't see the whole capacity, and needed a patch for that too.

That was replaced, case and all, with another modest home build (2GHz I think, again single core) running Windows 98 which I managed to keep running until 2009 - it did all I needed so I didn't spend any more on it, until it was bluescreening all over the place, the hardware was failing, and it wasn't feasible to replace bits of it.

So, with a new job, I bought a HP laptop with Vista, which eventually took up a shocking proportion of the 250GB HDD with its bloat. It's got a bigger HDD now and Vista has been replaced by Mint, but its still going strong today.

But I still wish I'd kept the C64

[Pepi]

Machine Lang simulator I built from a electronic course, ZX80 Sinclair, Atari 800, VIC20, Commandor 64, 286, 386 and then on and on

[berndinger]

Sharp MZ80K 1982 CP/M
Schneider Joyce (Amstrad) 1986 CP/M
286 PC 10Mhz 1987 DOS 5.0 ?
486 PC 33Mhz 1992 Geoworks, Win 3.0
Pentium PC 1996 Win 95,98
Athlon Thunderbird 2002, always upgrading ..., Suse, Mandrake
I5 Desktop Shuttle DS61 2013, works already, Mandriva, Mint
Some weaker Asus Notebooks, all Mint
Now
Tuxedo 17 Laptop, 16GB Ram 1TB SSD, Energy saving i7 15W, Mint 19.1 Cinnamon

cheers,
Bernd

[AndyMH]

Started with a Z80, 64k RAM, twin 180k 5 1/4" floppies running CP/M, think this was around 1983 and cost a fortune. Then moved to a dual 8088/Z80 system with 800k floppies running concurrent CP/M - it was wonderful, an LSI Octopus - before buying my first IBM lookalike. Thereafter I built my own. Did buy the kids an amstrad C128.

[donblanco]

Well, being rather poor and growing up when PC's were still expensive I was unable to enjoy ownership of a home PC until I was in my 30's. I did get to play with many, and use many at work, but my first home PC was a loaner from work. One old IBM tower and an early Mac. Currently using generic desktop I pieced together myself and Lenovo Ideapad which set me back all of $200 at BestBuy. Also a Raspberry Pi.

[lsemmens]

I purchased an 8086 machine with 2x360kb floppy drives and 256kb of RAM. CGA was the state of the art, but I could not see the advantage of colour. Running DOS 2.11.
When finally I upgraded I went 386sx with a HUGE 40Mb HDD and 640kb RAM. Still with monochrome monitor running Windows 3.0.
Then an IBM APTIVA 80486 with W95 and 64Mb of RAM. A HUGE 2Gb hard drive.
From there it gets messy with various iterations of computers and parts. I mainly built my own from then on.
I stuck with W95 until I settled on W2000 (98 gave me no advantage and Windows ME was.... say no more)
When XP came along I took the plunge and started investigating Linux too but it was not yet ready for my needs.
Stayed with XP until W7 and skipping W8 and that UGLY interface, moved to W10. I was happy with Windows 10 for about 12 months, then came Linux.
My current hardware consists of 3 laptops, a couple of old HP Proliants, a few Dells, and a computer I've built into a bookshelf as a media server (Gigabyte MOBO and Quad core AMD phenom) been like that for about 10 or so years. Those that get the most use are the HP lappy that I am currently typing on and the media server. The rest get fired up from time to time, depending upon what I am doing, and where. One lives in my office, another is to go into the rumpus room as a media player. One was for my wife, which she no longer needs. and a few spares.

[wallyUSA]

Started with NCR Decision Mate V in mid 80's. Had dual floppies (no hdd) and ran MSDOS & CP/M.

ncr dmv.jpg

[smurphos]

My first



My second



My third - ooh a disc drive rather than load programs via cassette.


A gap of about 10 years with no computer ownership and only a very blurry recollection of what was a fun life at the time...

My fourth



My current

[Valsodar]

The First One was a Pentium IV at 2.0 GHz but it lasted less than a year - it was killed by a lightning, then I bought another PC with newer generation Pentium IV at 2.66 GHz by Hewlett-Packard which served me faithfully several years (and surprisingly still works under the management of the person whom I sold it to). After that I got a PC with dual core E3300 but it turned out to be too slow, so I bought a second hand CPU Q6600 and used it about 3 years. After that I decided it was time I stopped using second hand hardware and saved money for almost a year but eventually got $600 and bought (part by part, because I didn't want Microsoft to dictate what I can or can not install on my hardware*) what I have now - the rig in my signature which can run at high settings even games that require a minimum of a quad core i5 (such as GTA 5 or Mad Max). During the time I was saving money my AMD card died within its warranty period, so I returned it to the store, payed in addition and got GTX 1050 Ti.

*Back then when purchasing an already assembled computer from a store, it was hardware locked to work only with Windows and didn't allow booting anything that wasn't Microcrap. The only way to avoid that is to assemble the computer myself by purchasing the hardware piece by piece. Which is even better because Bulgarian stores tend to sell ancient machinery at the price of an i7-7770 and since the computer is already assembled, you can't see what's inside. If you do open it, then the warranty is gone. So by assembling it myself I know exactly what resides in my computer.

[Portreve]

The first computer I was exposed to was an Apple IIc, back in middle school. Looking upon that time now, it was a real waste because nobody in the school knew the first thing about computers, much less any of Apple's offerings. Heck, there were like three or four people in the building who even knew how to type, so (again, looking back in hindsight) that was a joke having non-typists try to teach typing.

In 1985, I saw my first Macintosh. A local Apple dealership had an exhibit with both 128k and 512k models. The next year, my grandmother bought me the then-brand new Mac Plus.

After high school, I had a succession of different models of Macs, including a Mac II, IIci, Centris 650, and so on.

During the 90s and early 2000s, I built and rebuilt a number of PCs, and I dabbled with Windows 95-XP. As a tech enthusiast, I've always immersed myself into the technology world, and it's given me quite the varied, eclectic background.

My current system is a MacBook Pro 13" that I got in 2011. It's run Linux Mint full time since 2015, and I couldn't be happier. I was never completely ensnared by Apple where my data was concerned, but nevertheless I did have a full-court press to 100% liberate all of my data from proprietary and/or legacy formats.

My next system, if possible, will be something from Purism. I have absolutely no need for any proprietary software at this point, so shedding the last vestiges of Apple's presence in my home is really just a formality.

[AndyMH]

having non-typists try to teach typing

Back in the day (talking early '70's here), I did a touch typing course (manual typewriters) when I was in the RN. Never used it so lost the skills. Fast forward to the '80's and my (ex) wife bought me a touch typing course as a birthday present, called iankey and think it ran under CP/M. By that time I was a consultant - don't get paid until you've delivered the report! Best present ever, touch typist ever since. Probably hit +50wpm on standard tests - "now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party, the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog". At least I can type faster than I can think.

An under-rated skill.

Edit - and given everybody is posting pics of their early computers, here an LSI Octopus circa 1983 (Z80/8088 concurrent CP/M):

museum2.jpg

What was wonderful about this was a number of things:

• All the function keys (there were a lot) could be remapped and they provided overlays (physical) for the huge keyboard for popular programs, like wordstar, which made them easier to use.

• You could define the parameters for the FDD so it could read other system's floppy disks, e.g. IBM. At the time everybody used their own FDD format - sector size, read order, etc. Only defeated by one system (popular but can't remember the name that used variable speed drives).

• You could design your own 'on screen' fonts.

Wasn't cheap though, think it cost me about £2000 (in then money - yet another bank loan).

[mediclaser]

My first exposure to computers was in tech school using PC/XT compatible machines (8088, 256K to 640K RAM). The first machine I owned was a 486 desktop running DOS + Win3.x. My second machine was a Compaq Presario laptop (2.4 GHz Pentum 4, 512MB RAM) running WinXP.

[vansloneker]

Sharp MZ80K 1982 CP/M
...

I've had one of those, although a Basic version.
Then a Wang came, a huge box at least twice the size of a regular AT-system with a small sweet green displaying monitor. It was very modern because it had an internal hard disk installed of no less than 10 megabyte with DOS on it. The sweat when 'Wang' had me for the first time format and reinstall it!

[Marie SWE]

Okaj.. fun tread

This will be a long but fun list.

Desktops History:
My first computer was a Atari 1040ST wen I was 12 in 1987(saved and still works)
My first PC was around 1988 or 1989 a used commodore PC10 II 8088 with 640kB ram.. later upgraded to 2x10MB hard drives or if it was 2x20MB harddrives and 384kB memory expansion card for high mem. (saved and still works)
Don't remember the name a 286 with a switch 6/8MHz or was it 8/10MHz....(saved missing some parts)
own build 386 with turbo switch(saved motherboard, cpu ram)
Ast i486SX25 and with i487 chip (saved and still works win3.11)
Own build 486 DX4 ???MHz
The Pentium age
Bought P66 don't remember manufacturer name later upgraded to P90 and later P120
Own build Intel 133MMX Later upgraded to 233MMX.. then overclocked to around 300+ MHz with a big cpu heat sink and a bigger cpufan
Bought P2 400MHz don't remember manufacturer name isn't labeled on the front. (saved and still works win98)
Own build P3 500MHz
Bought Fujitsu siemens P3 ????MHz (saved and still works win2000)
Own build P4 ?GHz
HP P4 ?GHz (saved and still works) Win XPpro)
HP Celeron ??GHz (saved and still works) Win XPpro)
Dell Pentium ??GHz (saved and still works) Win XP Home)

Laptops History:
Toshiba T3100e/40 286 6MHz 40MB HDD (saved and still works but broken harddrive)
AST Ascentia 800N 486 DX2 50MHz Win95 (saved and still works)
IBM 5210PT Pentium 166 64MB ram 2GBHDD win98 (saved and still works)
Acer Aspire 3610 Celeron M370 1.5GHz 2GB ram 80GB Ata HDD WinXP (saved and still works)
Advent 1315Nordic Pentium T2310 1.46 GHz 2GB ram 160GB Sata HDD Win Vista(saved and still works)

Server History:
Dell Poweredge 2xP3 550MHz

Now in use:
HP MT E8600 win7pro x64 (TV computer)
HP MT Q9650 win7pro x64 (work computer)
Dell small form factor E8600 (software lab computer)
Own build i3 3220 Win7pro (personal computer)
Own build i5 4690k Win7pro x64(work computer)
Laptops:
Asus A73S i3, 4GB ram 1TB HDD Win7pro x64 (work laptop)
Acer E1-572 i5, 6GB ram 1TB HDD Dualboot Mint 18.3 Xfce x64 + Win7pro x64(original win8.1) (personal laptop)
Server:
HP Server Xeon L5640 WinServer 2008R2 (server)

I may have forgotten some History computers

[Pierre]

since I'm always receiving some throw-away(s) - - it's always improving.


my first PC, some 30 years ago - - was based on an z80 CPU & it run C/PM 2.2 ( or ZCPR3 )

the latest pair of Laptops, were upgraded by myself, a few years back, from win-8 to win-10.


now - I've just gotta work out what's wrong with their hardware, if anything,
& zap the contents of their HDDs & replace that with something more useful.


and I'm kinda liking the white Laptop - - some Mug has upgraded the RAM, with an UN-matched pair of memory sticks,
& that could just be the reason as to why it runs so bad, on win-10 - - a little eBay searching is still coming . . . .

[kc1di]

My first computer was a VIC20 , then Tandy 286 tape drive, then home built 386, 486, I686, with increasing ram and HDD space. First install linux in 1993 or so.
First distro was Slackware then Red Hat. About the time I got the 386 going. Then a couple of Pentiums and Lastly I now have Dell Laptop 1654 I3, 4 Gb ram,
I will be upgrading this soon to either another Dell or Lenovo. It's been fun.

[iain_33]

Hehe, computers were simpler back then but how did we get by with such little memory/storage... and why did we pay so much?! I remember before I got the 386 I was looking at a home-build 486 DX2 system, but the motherboard/CPU alone would have cost me over £400. Not to mention the rest of the system. And in hindsight, it would have been obsolete in no time. Years later, my laptop - full system, many times more powerful - only cost over £500.

[AndyMH]

My first computer, Z80, 64k RAM, twin 180k floppies = £1000 (1982), move forward to 2019 - nodeMCU/ESP8266, 70MHz processor, 128k RAM, 4M flash RAM, wifi = £5.

[Basset-Hound]

A BBC (Forget the model) built by Acorn in the early 80's when Chuckie Egg was the talk of the gaming world
The odd Mackintosh, A Commodore Amiga 500 here and there. I still have my old ZX Spectrum tucked away. Might give it a whirl at the weekend to see if it still works. I miss the games on the Amiga though